As academics, we are committed to providing the best possible education for our students As we engage in our teaching, scholarly, and creative activities, it is natural for us to ask questions about the programs that we provide. What are the central concepts and abilities we hope students will take away from our courses? From our majors? From our general education requirements?
Many of us routinely evaluate our success in educating students, either explicitly or implicitly, in terms of their attainment of “bigger picture” levels of learning rather than simply in terms of grades earned in particular courses. Art students are evaluated for signs of progression in portfolios of their creative works, mathematics and foreign language students are examined for their proficiency, departments track the performance of their graduates on professional and GRE examinations, and so on.
The University of Oregon is firmly wedded to the belief that the most effective assessment is that which is carried out with the express purpose of informing and improving the academic mission of the University. In accord with this belief, assessment efforts are embedded throughout the curriculum and co-curriculum, thereby avoiding an artificial and inappropriate separation between educational practices and their assessment. Thus, the University does not maintain a separate office of assessment, but instead has convened an Assessment Council, charged with discussion and coordination of the University’s assessment efforts and chaired by the Associate Vice Provost for Academic Affairs.
This assessment web site, deliberately and appropriately housed within the domain of Academic Affairs, is designed to serve as a tool for individual academic units in their engagement with assessment. To this end, this site provides examples of assessment plans, both from University of Oregon academic units and from other institutions, serving to illustrate the range of assessment interpretations and activities being undertaken by each discipline. Further illustration of the range of assessment activities is provided by an Inventory of Current Assessment Practices, a dynamic document that, it is hoped, may inspire others to recognize innovations in assessment and their value, and to recognize the relationship of their own efforts to the broader assessment endeavor.
Kenneth M. Doxsee
Associate Vice Provost for Academic Affairs
Professor of Chemistry
Chair, UO Assessment Council